26 THE NEBULAE HYPOTHESIS. 



less. If, therefore, there was originally generated, by rotatory 

 motion, at Saturn's equator, an amount of centrifugal force 

 sufficient to throw off particles to the present position of the 

 rings of that body, certainly the immensely increased centrifu- 

 gal force generated by the revolution of those rings in about 

 the same period, would have thrown the same particles still 

 farther, and would probably have dissipated them into chaos 

 especially as the attractive force of the primary, at that dis- 

 tance, must have exerted considerably less influence upon 

 them. 



The same reasoning applies with equal force to that ring, or 

 circle of attached matter, which rises above the line of sphe- 

 ricity at Saturn's equator, and also at the equators of other 

 planets, and of the earth. The acting forces are of the same 

 nature, and bear similar relations to each other in both places, 

 the only difference being a difference in the degrees of in- 

 tensity with which they act in the different positions. 



These considerations show that in all stages of the process 

 by which planetary bodies were formed, the attractive, con- 

 tractive, or centripetal force, had decided predominance over the 

 centrifugal. Supposing the two forces to have always acted 

 together after both became established, the centrifugal force, 

 it is true, must have always restrained and modified the 

 intensity of the centripetal, in the direction of the plane of 

 rotation, but could never throw farther into space a particle 

 which the centripetal or attractive, had succeeded, in defiance 

 of the opposing, force, in bringing from a greater to a less 

 distance from the center. 



The bulged form of the earth and other planets, therefore, 

 could not have been produced by a throwing out of particles 

 at the equator, but rather by a drawing in of particles from 

 the poles, where the attractive force was comparatively unre- 



